


Pilgrim - Frensham Farm

by Siola



Category: Pilgrim (Radio)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 02:09:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20056324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siola/pseuds/Siola
Summary: When Jess finds a vagrant sleeping in her barn, she has no idea that her life is about to change.





	Pilgrim - Frensham Farm

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic based on Sebastian Baczkiewicz's Radio 4 stories - apologies to US readers! - based on a man made immortal as he journeyed to Canterbury in the twelfth century because he denied the presence of 'The Grey Folk' - unfortunately to the King of the Grey Folk himself. He is cursed to walk between the worlds of magic and of men, and to be forever called on to sort out the problems both are having with the other. Most of the stories are based on English fairy or folk tales. This one has no particular source.
> 
> Set after Caudely Fair.. after the radio series, total, and ignoring (a little bit) 'The Winter Queen'. (In 'The Winter Queen', Palmer is given a very distant hope that, one day, he will die. It is a very distant hope indeed. I've ignored that for this fic.)
> 
> This is the first fic I've put up here... Fingers crossed.

Pilgrim - Frensham Farm

Jess couldn’t have said what made her go to the hay barn on the way back from checking on the horses but something must have done.

She opened the door carefully, wishing that she had bought another padlock as soon as the old one had been broken off- by idiots who had taken one look at the piles of hay and bales and not bothered to go any further. 

Nothing. 

It was still, within as without, and her breathing made little white clouds that dissipated into the chill without any interruption. Her hand closed on the cold wood, defensively, ready to slam the door but there was nothing there to alarm: just moonlight on the earth floor within and the shining strands of dry grass, the scent of which was like the ghost of summer on the icy air of December.

She was just about to relax and leave, already preparing a pot of tea in her mind’s eye and anticipating the rich heat, when there was the faintest rustle in the straw, such as a rat or mouse might make. Not unusual - but the hair on the back of her neck was slowly rising and sweat prickled suddenly under her arms.

It came from the back of the barn, where the light of the moon died out against the piled bales, and failed to illuminate the old stalls. She swallowed, fighting panic and found a voice that was a little louder than she had expected it to be, forced past tense muscles.

“Who’s there?” It was more of a squeak than she’d hoped - and there was no response. 

A rat.That was all.

Behind the barn, owls were calling to each other and she could hear the horses moving softly in their stable by the paddock.She had the farm mapped in her head and sounds coloured it.The low constant rumble of the main road way beyond the hills and gentle valleys of Frensham Farm; the sound of Bob Jakes’ old dogs from over by Goddart’s; the bark of a fox nearer, in Parson’s Wood; all of these spelled out the farm. She was its master, knew its smallest detail, knew where to run and where to hide.Nothing here could hurt her.

And she had the gun in her hands, finger on cold metal as she listened again.

After a long minute, she heard another rustle - something larger than a rodent. She raised the gun.

“Whoever you are, you can come out,” she ordered, and opened the door wider, so that the light could flood in further.Straining her eyes, she thought she could see something at the back.Something smooth and rounded.The toe of a boot - something sturdy and solid - was just visible. Or she thought it was.

A bloody tramp or some kid smashed out of his skull, she thought, while another voice pointed out that Frensham was a long way off the beaten track.She ignored it and edged in further, careful not to block the light.

Doc Marten, she could see. The shadow cast by the stall lay over whoever was there in the loose hay like a blanket half-kicked off during the night.All she could see was the edge of a thick woollen coat, a scruffy rucksack and that one foot, the laced-up boot and the frayed hem of old jeans.As she came closer, she could also smell him.

So. Tramp, most like.

“What d’you think you’re doing in here?” she demanded and there was a movement in answer that had her aiming the gun barrel directly at the shadow. “I’m armed,” she added.

The next sound she heard was the low groan of someone too deeply asleep to wake easily. She watched as one arm stretched out of the black shadow and seemed to reach out, then whoever it was turned over. More of the heavy overcoat became visible.

“You can sit up,” she said and made it an order.

It was an order slow in the obeying, and accompanied by another soft groan. A dark-haired man slowly pushed himself up to sitting, one hand rubbing over his eyes and face as he blinked up, stupid with sleep.She got the impression of dark stubble or beard, before he bowed his head into both hands and breathed out heavily. The coat was stained, mud coated the boots and had splashed his jeans to the knee.

“What are you doing in here?”

A long pause before an answer in a voice thick and ragged came to her ears. “Sleeping?” He sounded puzzled.

“Not in my barn, you don’t.”

“Sorry,” the man mumbled and rubbed his face again, palms scraping on stubble. He took a deep breath and glanced up. “Please?”

“Please what?” She took a step back. “Stay put! Hands where I can see them.”

He muttered something that sounded like “Oh, God.” but had the wit to do as he was told, his hands clasped about his knees. “Please, lady… Just ’til morning?” The voice was hoarse and low with a touch of the north.

“You’re not sleeping in here.”It sounded harsh even to her ears.

For a moment, he didn’t move, then he lifted both hands in an eloquent gesture of surrender and turned to lift the rucksack on to his lap.She watched as he fumbled with straps, checking that something was in there then, satisfied, tightened everything up again. His greasy, unkempt hair was silvered by the moonlight, but she thought his hands were those of a man in his prime, not some old timer.

“Come on. Get up. I haven’t got all night.”

He moved slowly, with her gun trained on his back, and she wonder if she’d got his age wrong, he was so unsteady on his feet. She couldn’t smell alcohol, just old sweat as he passed her. He pushed himself off the door jamb, out into the moonlight and then stopped in the yard. From the angle of his head, it looked as though he was gazing at the moon.

“Beautiful,” she heard him murmur as she reached behind and closed the barn door. “So beautiful.” Definitely Yorkshire in that accent.

“Where did you come from?”

He didn’t turn but lifted one hand slightly to indicate the woods. Then, as she came round to his side, he nodded his head to her, almost as if he bowed.

“Thank you, lady,” he said in his low, hoarse voice.

“What for?”

“For not shooting me?” There was the warmth of a smile in the reply. He hitched the rucksack higher on his shoulder. “God speed you.”

She watched him go across the yard to where the gate opened on the wood path, and stop there for a moment, one hand on the gatepost.

“Wait!” she called.

***

She woke before dawn to the distant, familiar sound of a man humming while he shaved and the small splashes of a razor in water, the noise that had always accompanied Luke’s ablutions, interrupted as a particular stroke required attention.

He had been so tired that she’d had difficulty getting him up the stairs to the spare room, then, faced with her pristine white sheets, he had protested so stubbornly that she’d fetched the old blanket that had once been the dog’s and thrown it over the bed.When she’d returned with a glass of water, he was already asleep on it, coat and boots still on, half-curled on his side, head buried in the crook of one arm.

That had been a full day and a half ago.

Now, she washed and dressed hurriedly so that she would be down the stairs and in charge of her own domain before she had to face the stranger she had brought into her house. What if he had been drugged rather than exhausted?Who knew what kind of man turned up in a barn, sleeping rough in straw?

“Frying bacon would draw the angels from heaven,” a deep voice commented from the doorway.

“Hungry, are you?”

“Very.”

“Well then, come and sit down if you want to eat,” Jess said and began to load a plate with the contents of the frying pan.She didn’t look at him until she had placed it before him on the table and turned to the kettle on the Aga. He was younger than she had supposed. “And don’t let it get cold.I’ve had mine. Eat.”

She filled the teapot and observed stealthily under her fringe. Dark-haired, yes. Much better now it was clean: wavy, a bit long. She thought his eyes were dark, too. Certainly he was better-looking without the stubbled beard. Rather good-looking, truth be told. And she’d been right to leave a belt in the bathroom alongside Luke’s old clothes: he was near Luke’s height but a lot thinner.

She brought the teapot over and placed it on the scrubbed wood. “Or do you have coffee?”

He looked up from his plate from which bacon, mushrooms and bread were disappearing tidily and fast. “I’m happy with tea.”

“Yorkshire - strong, I take it?”

“Any way it comes,” he nodded without commenting on her statement. “I thank you, lady.”

“You can’t keep calling me that,” she said, filling his cup. “The name’s Jess.”

He paused, swallowed and held out his hand across the breakfast table. “William,” he said and took her hand in a firm warm grasp. “William Palmer. Or Bill. Or Billy.”

“I see.” She watched him clear his plate. “I’m having some toast. Want some?”

“Please.”

She sat and drank her tea, ate her toast and watched him eat as if he hadn’t fed properly in days.He suited Luke’s old clothes, the russet and grey. She ascertained that his eyes were dark grey rather than the brown she had first supposed.

“Your old clothes, they’ll be needing a wash.”

“Oh - but…”

“I’m doing the wash today any how.”

He put down his knife, and smiled at her, a smile that transformed a face otherwise rather serious and she felt her heart thump in a way that hadn’t happened in years. _For God’s sake, Jess, s_he snapped at herself._ Just because a handsome man smiles at you, there’s no need to get all unnecessary._

“I should have thanked you before now.”

“For what? For not kicking you out to freeze to death in the woods? For the lend of some old togs and a bite of breakfast? Don’t be daft, man.”

“For taking in a total stranger.And feeding him the best bacon he’s tasted in decades.” He was grinning at her, teasing. “I can’t thank you enough. And for letting me sleep.”

“You do realise you slept right through yesterday”

The grin faded and he looked perplexed. “No… Really?” He pushed his fingers through his hair. “No wonder I feel better.”

“Not been sleeping lately?”

“Er… No. Not much.”

Nor eating much, nor looking after yourself, my lad, she thought grimly.

*

His clothes were in a terrible state, worse than she had realised in the night. The sweater was unravelling and already had several darns, well enough done but even so… The jeans were thick with mud and she had to beat it out against the outside wall of the utility room before she dared wash them. He was in the yard, thumping the mud off his boots, having got the worst out of his greatcoat, whistling under his breath as she filled the washing machine and set it on to wash long and thorough.

She wondered where he was, when she emerged, then heard the sound of an ax, and saw him attacking the woodpile. The strokes were neat, economical and practised, the split logs stacked carefully in the lee of the shelter, and she watched for a long moment. Luke had used to claim the job for his alone, getting angry if she tried, and for a second she saw her husband there, his bulky body almost graceful in powerful movement. She pushed the shock away, just as William Palmer finished.

“Do you want me to muck out or anything?” he asked as he came over.

“Know horses, do you?”

He nodded. “A bit.” 

She liked his laconic statement, which seemed to her to be all Yorkshireman, no boasting, no frills.

“Well, they aren’t my favourite - that was always Luke’s business. So if you’ve a mind to it,” she said. She watched him goand turned away, back to where she had left the loom in the workroom, ready warped and already slicing into slivers the thin winter sunlight.

*

He knew horses, she could tell. Coming out to announce lunch, she found him talking to the bad-tempered roan, clearly having had a slight altercation with the animal. The stalls all looked pristine, well-strawed and troughs filled.

“..and you can take that look off your face, too,” William Palmer seemed to be quite serious, one hand on its headstall, the other teasing a knot out of the forelock. “Admit it. You lost. And no-one likes a sore loser.”

The horse shook its head and then lipped a little at the man’s chest.

“Better,” he said and stroked the long nose. “And perhaps later, you might get groomed properly, hmm?”

“That one… Prince bites,” she said and he turned, to smile at her.

“I know. At least, I found out.”

She looked about. “Looks good. Hungry?”

*

“You’ve farmed?”

They were sharing coffee in the evening, sitting in front of the farmhouse fire, staring into the flames.

He grunted. “Some. A while back.” He sipped his coffee and made a small appreciative sound. “You’re on your own with all this?”

Jess hid for a moment behind her mug then lowered it in both hands. “Used to be two of us but not now. Luke.”

“Husband?”

“We never got round to that. But we were together a while - ten years. Seven years ago.”

“Ah.”

“Those are his clothes you’re wearing.”

He said nothing but continued to look at her in the semi-darkness, the wavering flamelight making his face a mask.

“He - left.” She paused. “I just never got round to throwing any of it out.” She hurried on. “There’s no sentimental value, so don’t worry. Good to get some use out of them. Your stuff’s as good as rags.”

He made a sound of protest.

“Well, it is.God knows how long you’d been wearing it.” There was no reply to this hint so she pressed on. “William, how long have you been on the road?You’ve got nothing with you. No food, no change of clothing. Nothing.”

“Did you - Did you go through my bag?” he asked.

“No! Of course not.But there’s little in it, I can see that, and you’re as thin as a rail.”

He bowed his head for a moment as if thinking or considering then looked up at her. “I had - had a shock. A sort of - And it gave me… well, I suppose you might call it PTSD nowadays.I’m not sure how long I’ve been walking.” He drank coffee, considered the flames. “I know it was last year. Last summer solstice. I thought - I thought I’d got through it, that it wouldn’t bother me.” He shifted in his seat, as if memories were making him physically uncomfortable. He sounded embarrassed.“But then - it did. I couldn’t think straight.I think I hit the road then. Or so I seem to remember.” He glanced up with a wry expression. “You’ll think I’m mad. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” she said. “I’ve heard worse. Seen worse.” Then she shook herself. “Listen, you don’t have to tell me. I’ve had enough of people prying: I know what it’s like. You just rest a bit. See how you feel.”

She’d got it right: he was ready to sleep again though it was not yet nine o’clock. He got up, thanked her again and she followed his progress above her head until all fell quiet once more.As she banked the fire, she could feel the frost tightening around the farmhouse, as it always did in the depths of winter, closing bitter fingers about the stones. She went up to bed herself.

***

He was easy to live alongside, she decided over the next two days. He woke early and slept early without apparently stirring. She heard nothing from the spare room at night.He worked hard during the day, taking all the chores that she had resented so much, even exercising the four horses, turn by turn. She’d taken a break to watch him. He was easy in the saddle, his body responsive to that of the horse. She should have told him to wear a hard hat but she preferred to let be: he looked safe enough and kept to the paths and fields of the farm for the most part, only taking the roan on to the woodland. She was reassured by the fact that the horrible animal had taken a liking to him; she liked hearing his voice indistinct from outside, as he talked to it while he worked.

The new padlock that she’d bought for the hay barn got fitted, and the fence at the back of the paddock mended, without fuss, without even saying. She brought him coffee and liked to watch his hands and arms as he worked, the muscles and sinews moving under the skin, the capable fingers sure of their skill with the tools that had been her father’s and her grandfather’s. And he didn’t talk much, didn’t chatter.They might eat a meal, and clear away without exchanging more than a few words. She got the impression that he was grateful for the peace.

She was deeply into her work next morning, adding gold threads to the weft as the design in her head told her to, when the supermarket delivery came. Normally, she would have heard the doorbell and gone to collect but this time, William Palmer was in the yard and she heard him greet the driver, his tone friendly.

“Here - I’ll take that,” his voice was clear enough to hear from where she sat.

“You working for her, then?” The driver’s tone was of disapproval.

“For a bit.”

There were the sounds of unloading, the creaking of a lorry bed.

“Want to watch it,” the driver said. He must have been inside the van because his next words were more distinct. “Might not be safe.”

“Oh? How’d you mean?”

Jess sat still, her cheeks flaming as she listened.

“Her fella. Luke, his name was. Disappeared.”

“Well, folk sometimes do disappear.” It seemed almost determinedly reasonable.

“Not like that. No word to anyone, not his people. Not his clients. Took nothing, the police said.” The driver slammed the door of the van: the sound was tinny and mean. “And I mean, nothing. Never a word, no trace.Just gone.”

“Ah.. And this was when, you say?”

“Must be - I dunno - seven years ago? Winter time then, too, so you watch yourself. She’s not - not quite… All there, maybe. There’s always been stories about Frensham, but never no-one disappeared before old Luke.”

“I see.” The sound of an engine being engaged and the van drove off, leaving Jess sitting with her cold hands pressed to her hot face and rage in her heart. Rage, and loss and something else, something that didn’t want to see William Palmer’s face ever again.

When she came out hours later and called him into supper, he was working in the stable, sitting saddle-soaping harness and humming under his breath.The light from the lamp over his head was soft and yellow and the stable was warmer than outside, and sweet with the scent of horses and hay. He looked up as she came to the door.

“I hope you don’t mind but I’ve used some of the soap on my boots,” he said, not looking up from his task. And there they were, shining softly in the light while he worked on in stockinged feet.

“Of course. And thanks for taking the delivery.”

He did stop then and his hands with their tangle of leather rested in his lap as he looked up at her. He paused for a long moment then said very gently, “You didn’t shoot me, Jess. You took me in. I can’t think I’ve anything to fear, you know.”

She couldn’t speak. Instead, she shrugged and fled back to the kitchen and tried to stop shaking.

*

It seemed that he was disinclined to push the matter and having washed his hands in the scullery with what she was coming to know as his usual thoroughness, took his seat at her table with an alert appreciative expression.

“Oh, I haven’t had proper dumplings since Headingley,” he said as she placed the shallow dish before him. “I didn’t think they did them like this down here.”

She slid into her chair and poured cider into her glass and then, after a moment, into his.

“Luke used to like them with rosemary in. He was from Yorkshire, like you.”

“Oh?” There was silence while the first mouthful of lamb stew was chewed and swallowed. “Jess, this is marvellous.”

So he was not going to question her. Or not yet. 

Some of her alarm and anger died down and after a good pull at the cider, she felt more balanced. She watched him take a good mouthful.

“Do you make this, too?”

“Yes. You’ve seen the trees. Good old cider apples, bitter as sin.”

“Covered in mistletoe.”

“Never cut it, my grandfather said.”

“Wise man.”

They ate the meal in silence, a silence that was deeper than usual, with the low background hum of the main road entirely absent as it sometimes was when the air moved in a different direction.

“William -” she started abruptly then stopped. He laid his cutlery in the dish and folded his arms on the table edge, looking at her. She couldn’t read anything in his expression except a mild interest.

“William, I don’t know what happened to Luke. I really don’t.”

He nodded.

“And for that matter, neither does anyone else. Not his mum, not his sister, and not the police.And definitely not anyone from the village.”

Another nod.

“They were all over this place, into everything, took Luke’s computer, everything, but nothing was ever found.” She could feel her throat closing up. “He just went out one day and he never came back. Not a word.No letter. Nothing. He just left the farm and his bloody horses and he went. He left me with it all, with all of it, and -” She couldn’t speak any more and shut her eyes tight on the treacherous tears, shoving her fist against her mouth while she forced herself to breathe calmly.

Then she heard the sound of wood scraping on stone and felt arms around her, a hand at the back of her head and a shoulder to bury her face in while she cried and cried as she never had, not since the day Luke had left. She clung to his sweater - Luke’s sweater - and sobbed, feeling the deep well of pain and anger opening up, emptying with every heartfelt lungful of air, with the tears that were flooding, soaking his shoulder. She could feel his steady hand, moving slightly against her hair, and hear that he said something, something that soothed, but for a very long time, she paid it no notice at all.

Finally, she could feel the sobs dying down, though occasionally, one caught at her throat and her breath shuddered like a small child’s.

“Have this,” she heard and a tissue was being pressed into her hand. She scrubbed at her nose and eyes and finally lifted her head from his chest. The wool was wet under her fingers.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to do that. I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s all right.”

“No!No, it’s not. It’s not all right,” she found anger again, and pushed back from him. He was crouching by her chair and looked startled at her sudden fury. “Because Luke vanished and no-one ever heard from him again and for the last seven years, people I grew up amongst, people who _know_ me, think I murdered him.”

“That’s hard,” he said and got up stiffly, going back to his seat. He changed his mind and fetched the cider jug. “Could you do with more of this?”

Numbly, she nodded and he poured for them both before sitting in his place again. She found that her hand was trembling and put the glass down. He reached across and put his fingers over hers. It felt warm and solid and she was grateful for the steadying weight.

“And you have no idea why he went?”

She shook her head. “None.” The cider was a little too warm but swallowing it helped her throat to ease. “He seemed normal. Everything was normal. He never took anything with him. Just went out to do his work, seeing to those bloody animals mostly, and he didn’t come back.”

He said nothing and she was grateful that he asked no more questions. It made sense: he must have done the same thing, walked out of his life, and it seemed he wanted to contact no-one.Perhaps he did understand.

His gaze was steady and his hand was not shaking when he lifted his glass.

“Do you want me to leave?”

The question surprised her and then her own surprise.It was a reasonable question, after all.He’d turned up, uninvited.Why shouldn’t she want him gone?

“Not if you’d like to stay,” she said.This time, she managed to take a mouthful of cider. “Your stuff’s dry if you want to go.”

He was in no hurry to answer, and in no hurry to move his hand from hers though he did withdraw it finally, calmly and unembarrassed.

“There’s a deep peace here,” he said. “I appreciate that.If you don’t mind my staying on - but you say when you want me to go and I’ll go.”

“All right.” She drained her glass and got up, gathering the dishes. “Did you sort that ewe?”

“Aye.Nothing much wrong. Just feeling uncomfortable, I think.”

She liked it that he was the sort of man who found the teatowel while the hot water ran into the sink. “I should think about getting rid,” she said, “once lambing’s done.The livestock’s Luke’s thing, always was.”

“Who farms the fields?”

“Coxen, over the way.”

They washed up and tidied away in companionable silence and then she made her decision.

“I do work, William,” she said. “I do.I just don’t - I never really liked farming.Dad had no-one else to leave the farm to and Luke was a god-send really.” She wiped her hands and felt the warmth of the water ebb away from her flesh. “Come and see.”

It would have been better in daylight and she had no clear idea about why it was suddenly urgent that he should see the result of her labour, who was so free with his, but there it was.She let him go into the room so that she could hang back and switch on the lamps, while watching his reaction. 

The reds glowed, the colours of fire and deep blood and the hearts of roses.The gold lit up and even half complete, the effect was almost all she could have wished.It was a test, she understood all at once.Let him fail this and the spell would be broken.

He was silent and utterly still, his face, seen in profile, was utterly free of expression.Then, as she watched, his lips parted a little and she heard a sighed breath.

“Oh,” the word was almost silent. “Oh, my…”

It might have struck her as rather old-fashioned and comical but for the depth of awe in the man’s voice. She waited, silent. There was a long pause.

“Oh, Jess…”

“I weave for a London gallery,” she said, as prosaically as she could, resisting the artless pride that his response had called up in her. “They pay a good price.”

“I’ll bet they do,” he said, almost distracted. “This is - this is wonderful.Just wonderful.”

“I dye the wool, too.”

“Ah.” He started forward then stopped and glanced back over his shoulder at her. “Can I look closer?”

She nodded, pleased that he understood the importance of her work, the fragility of the web, the poise of the mechanisms.He went close, hands behind his back, as if he had to force them not to reach out and touch, and it seemed as if he were reading the weaving, scanning the patterns that were half-emerging.

“Your wool?”

“No.It’s too coarse - this is from Melksham Farm. Sometimes, I mix it with other fibres.Silk’s nice.”

“Lady, it’s so beautiful… It’s like the very heart of winter, banked up and burning quietly.”

She should have laughed at such a pretentious assessment except that - he was completely sincere, she could have sworn it.The down-to-earth accent held nothing of mockery.

“Thanks.”

He turned away from his gazing. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Letting me see.” He looked again at her work in a long silence, which ended with another sigh of appreciation and pleasure.

***

Next day, it was raining heavily, the water half-ice and she made him wear Luke’s almost-new Barbour and flat cap. He came in for coffee, his hands frozen and his face almost blue with cold, to announce that it looked like snow over in the east.

“That’s where the worse will come from - my dad used to say the Old Woman sends it,” she said and plonked his coffee down on the table in front of him.He cupped his hands round the mug and yelped, letting go. “That coffee’s been in a hot place, you know.”

He made a face at her. “What Old Woman?”

“The one who lives under the hills, that’s what my dad said.” She slid the biscuit tin across. “William, you know what rubbish old people like to tell kids.Thunder is God moving the furniture. Snow is the angels shaking out God’s duvet.”

He laughed and she smiled to hear the sound.

“Don’t spill the salt or the Devil will get you,” she added. “Don’t forget to leave milk out for the fairies.”

“Unlikely they’d bother with milk,” he said, grinning. “Half a bottle of Scotch, now - that’ll do it every time.”

“And do I look like the sort of woman who wastes good Scotch on a bunch of shiftless, idle faerie folk?”

He reached across and briefly touched cold fingertips to her lips. “Hush, Jess.”

“What?” She felt his touch like a brand and brushed her fingers over her lips.

Gravely, he said, “You never know who’s listening.”

“Who? Fairies?For God’s sake, William - ”

“Grey Folk. Yes.”

She sat back, staring at him. “Are you completely - Is this why -?William, are you serious?”

Her heart sank as he made no reply but sat quietly under her scrutiny. A man of about thirty-five or forty; a practical, solid, outdoor sort of man, dressed in a working man’s clothes; a man with capable hands who mended fences and knew sheep and could master horses.A good-looking man, with a winning smile and a beautiful voice. Who seemed to think that fairies were as real as any neighbouring farmer.

So. 

Dear God, was this why he was on the road? Was he on medication? And was that why he’d been alarmed at the thought of her looking in his rucksack?

He let her watch without comment and didn’t seem alarmed.

“You are joking,” she stated without much conviction.

He shrugged. “Maybe.Maybe I’m just superstitious. Forget it.”

“You really are serious, aren’t you?”

“Let’s just say that I’ve had some - some experience, that’s all.But any way you explain it, we’re in for some weather.” He drank deeply from his coffee. “Is there anything you need doing?If not, I think I should chop more wood.”

“Oh.” For a moment, the change to the utterly prosaic flustered her. “That’s probably a good idea. I think we’ve got everything we need for a few nights, if we get snowed in.”

“Does that happen?”

“Sometimes.Strange this early, but who knows what’s going on with the weather nowadays.”

The rest of the coffee went down; they shared the last of the flapjacks that she’d made the previous week and it was as if the moment had never been.Until he paused as he laced up one boot and looked up at her.

“Did Luke mention the Old Woman at all?”

She shook her head, too quickly perhaps but he didn’t seem to notice. “Luke wasn’t superstitious.”

*

It didn’t snow that night but there was a good store of wood laid in ready and she brought her wheel into the main room and spun in the firelight.William Palmer dozed in the big armchair and the sparks flew from the logs, and whisked up the chimney.Jess felt the silence wrap around the farmhouse along with the cold and that here, by the hearth, under the oak beams, hard as iron, lay safety and shelter. The wind blew against the windows and outside, the holly shifted against the house walls but inside was completely peaceful, the rhythm of her spinning turning time, marking its passing…

When she finished the wool on her spindle, she looked up to find that the man had fallen asleep, his breathing relaxed and slow.The clock on the mantel told her it was half eight.Even her tidying the wheel away and the creaking of the wool basket scraping over the tiles failed to rouse him.

“William?”

He moved slightly but only to turn his face further into the shelter of his arm. She reached out, touched his shoulder and shook him slightly. “William? You should go to bed.”

An interrogatory noise, the kind that Luke had used to make when she tried to get him up for an early start, that of a man determined not to leave the soft warmth of his slumber. She smiled, feeling after so long that strange tenderness invoked by the strong becoming vulnerable, and she bent to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Come on, my dear,” she said softly. “Time to go to bed.”

He moved a little, and his eyes blinked open, clearly not seeing much. “Juliana?” he mumbled and then yawned, bringing his hands up to his face. “Are the children asleep?”

Jess stood back so that he should not know she had approached so closely.

“It’s time you went upstairs,” she said, her voice slightly loud. “I’ll be banking the fire.”

He sat up and rubbed his face, yawning again. “I’m sorry - I didn’t mean to fall asleep.I am not good company.”

“Oh, I don’t know.You’re quieter than our old dog used to be. Terrible animal for nightmares, that one.”

He grinned up at her then his smile died. “What? Jess, what is it?Have I been - was I saying anything?”

She turned to the fire and reached for the irons for the savage relief of poking something really hard. “Not much.I think you might want to let your family know where you are, though. You could try calling them tomorrow - put their minds at rest.”

***

Next day, the snow did start to fall, in thick felted masses that melted after a short while on the ground.William came in to breakfast, having seen to the horses and checked on the ewes in the near field and she thought he looked less relaxed than he had. His eyes were shadowed. Perhaps he hadn’t slept well; she had lain awake for some time, trying to rationalise her bitterness into something more reasonable.It wasn’t as if there was anything but a certain friendliness and comradeship between them, after all.

“I’ve done porridge - is that all right?’

“Perfect,” he said and drew out his chair. “It’s going to get colder today, I think.”

She doled out thick porridge and pushed vaguely at the collection of salt pot, honey jar and cream jug. “Help yourself.”

“This is just what I need,” he said and she bit back a comment that was unreasonably tart.There was nothing but the sound of spoons on pottery for a while then she finished and pushed her bowl from her.

“William, you mentioned Juliana last night.”

He looked up and his hand froze in mid-air. He was careful in putting the spoon down and she could not read his expression at all. She watched his hands as they briefly came up to his face.

“I’m sorry.I think - It was the sound of spinning, I think.And the scent of the wool.” He laid his hands, left over right, on the wood and kept his gaze on them. “I’m sorry.”

“And the children. You mentioned them, too.” Then, because she couldn’t help herself, she asked. “You’ve left your children?”

She could see his shock, though he didn’t vocalise it. She got up to fetch the teapot, for something ordinary to do as much as anything else.Pouring boiling hot liquid into mugs was something that required her full attention and she pushed one in his direction.

“Thank you.”

“I’m trying not to be disapproving, William,” she said and heard her mother’s voice in her own. “I meant it when I said about not prying but - ”

“I don’t know how to answer you.”

“What?”

He sighed and was silent, his gaze on nothing. She thought he was not going to answer but then, after a long time, when she was sipping her tea and trying to think of a way of opening a different topic, he nodded a little and took a deep breath.

“I want to tell you - but I don’t know how you’ll take it.”

She shrugged. “Won’t know until you try, will you?”

His smile was wry. “Thanks.” He glanced down then up at her. “Yes, I had a family. It was a very long time ago and they are all dead now - my wife Juliana, the three children. I can’t contact them.”

“Was it an accident?” Jess asked while her mind tried to take in the loss of a whole family.

“I don’t know how they died, apart from Izzy who got sick when he was a child. I was away, and something happened on the journey and I decided to go on with it and I didn’t get back in time.” He winced. “God knows, I ought to have done but I didn’t go back to Bayldon until years afterwards and by then there was no-one who remembered them at all. Or me, come to that.”

“What? No-one?Had they moved or something?” She drank more of her tea and considered him. He didn’t look as if he was pulling her leg, but this was ridiculous. “There must be records - you know, National Insurance and the Registrar’s office.You _must_ have looked, William.You couldn’t have just left it, surely?And you can check online. It’s easy.”

“There were no records in those days, not for ordinary folk like us.I was just a stonemason, working on the abbey most of the time.I knew my letters, figuring, just - but only to work, really.”

“You’re not making any sense. ‘Those days’ - It can only be, what, the 90s? You’re only just forty, if that. Thirty-five?”

He shook his head. “It’s a bit longer than that, I’m afraid. Hundreds of years. We left no trace, ordinary folk like us. We just vanished beneath the earth when our time came.” He took up his mug and drank - this time, she could see that his hand was not quite as steady as usual when he replaced the mug. His smile was sad. “My Mary, she was the eldest. Lovely girl, just wed, expecting her first. My first grandchild, it would have been… And there’s no way to know how it went with her. If she had the baby or - Or not. And if she had a family, and those children had children - No way to know. I could have been a grandfather. I could meet someone of my line every day and I’d never know.” He stopped talking abruptly and she could see that his eyes were swimming.

But.

“Hundreds of years?”

“Yes.”

“You _are_ joking?”

“No.”

There was nothing to latch on to, no clue as to how she was meant to take this. Unless she took it perfectly seriously.His voice was completely normal, if you discounted the roughness caused by trying to speak around the threat of tears; his expression was of a man talking about the everyday.Nothing hinted at an elaborate joke or at a delusion.He seemed perfectly sane.

“So. What are you saying?” She got a grip. “Look, when were you born?”

“I’m not sure.About 1145 or so. Maybe as late as 1150.”

This time, she did laugh, through sheer shock. “Dear God - that would make you about eight hundred and fifty years old! Don’t talk daft, man. You can’t be.”

He was silent, letting her splutter her disbelief.

“That just can’t happen, William. Not in this world.”

This time, he nodded. “Not in this world, no. I’ll give you that. But…”

“But what?”

“There is another world, a world alongside ours. And in that world, it can happen. Because it did happen.” He looked at her, his eyes meeting hers and she felt herself blushing but unable to look away. His gaze had force. And such a clear grey, almost like dark silver. “Please believe me when I say that I would give anything for it not to have happened.”

“How?”

He broke the contact, glancing away. “I went to Canterbury.I decided that I would go and pray at the martyr’s tomb, the first Bayldon man to walk to the shrine.In those days, I was so full of certainty and… and the love of God.Building the abbey and carving that golden Caen stone was like - Like fashioning light into something solid, bringing something of the kingdom of heaven down to earth and I felt that I needed to be better than I was to work on such a task.” His eyes were on something unseen in his memory and she could look at him without embarrassment. With appreciation, despite his mad talk.She felt a sudden need for charcoal and paper, to fix something of his presence into permanence. She noted that his accent had broadened: she could hear the Yorkshire strongly. “I think the others thought I was a bit obsessed. I suppose you have to be to walk all that way but the abbot was in favour and although Brother Aloysius swore his way through the entire saints’ calendar, he let me go in the end.With a few pence, too. And I met a man on the road…”

“And it was his doing?”

“Or mine.” He saw her expression and smiled. “Oh, I was so sure of myself, so sure that I knew what God intended for us all.And I was strong in faith in those days.” His smile broadened into a grin of self-mockery. “Such a fool. And we talked, this man and I.About all sorts of things.He was good company and when you walk all that way, you learn the value of good company - bit like Chaucer says. Not that anyone I travelled with told tales like that. Not until this man.”

“Who was he?”

“I didn’t know. I thought him just another pilgrim and a man like me - yeoman, he looked like. Middling prosperous; solid.” He sighed. “And then one day we get to talking about the Other World, and fairies and the supernatural and all of that nonsense. And he says that it’s not nonsense and that no Christ is going to rid the world of the Grey Folk and he’ll prove it on my body if I’ve a mind.Not that I was a fighter, not since I was a lad but when a man’s challenged like that, he has to make a stand of some sort, so I says yes, if he likes and I prepare to fight.” The smile was wry. “And he laughs and says to me, “William, I do not mean to punish you for your discourtesy but to gift you with a great gift.” Which had me very puzzled until he explained.”

“And?”

“No mortal death for me.My pilgrimage was to be endless, like the Grey Folk.His gift to me, the King of the Grey Folk, to walk the road between the worlds of men and of magic forever. And he can’t understand that it’s a curse, and - And I’ve begged him to free me - I’ve tried to get him to see that - That it is no gift.” He stopped, swallowed hard, cleared his throat. “And that’s how it happened.”

“And then?” She wasn’t sure how to take any of this but keeping him talking seemed best while she tried to process it all.

“And then I didn’t really believe him but strange things kept happening and I could see things that others couldn’t - and hear things, sometimes.Tried to ignore them, of course. I got to Canterbury and prayed at the shrine and I thought I heard the saint telling me to go on, on to Jerusalem. So I went - ah, Jess, that was something! Jerusalem, the city of God.. Marvels on marvels. And the holy places, all burning under that sun. I felt as if I could reach out and touch heaven, you know?”

“Not really.”

“No? Well, maybe not. Sorry. But - it was the most wonderful place and I met such people there. It was all so different to Yorkshire, as you might imagine. And time slipped away, while I travelled and met new folk, and learned new ways. When I got back to Europe, there was such a power of building and I was a master mason, so I was able to get work on all manner of sites, for the experience, the learning. The stone that I had my hands on - such stone.” His voice took on awe. “I carved marble such as I’d never dreamed of. The shining and the colours! I'd never seen anything like it. A true wonder.”

“No wonder you appreciated my work, then,” she said, to pull him out of memory as much as anything else.

“Yes.” He nodded. “The craft. I always appreciate the craft.”

“How long were you away?”

“That’s it. I didn’t notice how the years were slipping away until I saw the men I worked with starting to look at me strangely. I - I was called one day: greyfolk will do that, out of the blue and they’d heard me talking, to thin air as they thought. And it’d been ten years and I still looked the same, or so they said.So I left before anything could happen.”

“When did you get back?”

He watched her re-fill their mugs and shook his head. “I got waylaid. Greyfolk will do that, too.Because I could do things for them that no-one else could or would, and when you are in the other world, time can pass very strangely. Fifty years can pass in a night - and they did, and then I knew I couldn’t go home, because what could I say to them?When I looked not a day older than when I had set off?” He paused. “I was angry, then.Angry with the King, for his curse; angry with those I’d known for growing old.I met someone once, from my village. He was in York to visit his grandson’s family and he looked at me as if he thought he might know me but he couldn’t quite recall who I was… I made up some excuse, an uncle or so he might have known and then I went back to my room at the inn and I wept almost all night.”

“William…” Her hand reached for his and held it firmly. Tears were spilling fast and he was ignoring them. “Poor man.”

“Because if that was how Walter saw me, it’s how Juliana… That old man had been a boy when I left.A small child. And I knew that she would be older, if not dead. And my children would not know me, nor I them.”

“Here,” she pushed the tea towel into his hand. “Go on: it’s due a wash anyway.”

He scrubbed his eyes, his wet face, and took a deep breath. “Heaven help me, Jess - I haven’t talked about this for… For so long. I don’t talk about it.”

“Sounds as though you needed to.”

“Maybe. I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“You must think I’m crazy. And you’ll be wanting me gone, no doubt. Can’t blame you.”

She raised one eyebrow at him. “Clairvoyant, now, are you? Drink your tea and take some time. And if you think you’re going out into this, you are mad.”

Snow was falling beyond the windows, thick and fast, the light dulling to pale grey as they watched it fall. He got up to look and she joined him by the window. The ground was whitening and it looked as though the fall would stay frozen. “Though, if you are telling the truth… What would happen if you tried to sleep out in that?”

“I’d get extremely cold. I’m not indestructible. I get injured, hurt - like everyone else. It just doesn’t kill me.” Clear behind the words was the implication that he wished it would.

She let the silence grow as they watched the snow fall, endless and silent and beautiful. Did he still see things like this as wonders, after all that time?

“The greyfolk love their hills, their barrows, their woods, even though they’ve been there for millennia. To see such things and not be touched…? No.”

“And us? Ordinary people?How do you see us?” She wondered at her own calm in asking. Part of her was insisting that his story could not be true.

“As people.” He shifted, placed his palms up against the glass as if he would reach through and touch the snow. “Sometimes I can help them.With trouble they’re having.”

“You said greyfolk - greyfolk trouble?”

He nodded. “Sometimes.”

“Well, there’s nothing of that sort here,” she said briskly. “Perhaps it was because _you_ needed help that you came.” He nodded and she drew a little closer so that their shoulders touched. “Was it greyfolk trouble that set you off wandering again?”

“I… I was - I was caught by -” For a moment, he sounded embarrassed then his voice cleared and became matter-of-fact. “A very nasty enchantment - Caudely Fair. It locks you into whatever dream or moment from your past the enchanter chooses and you can stay there forever.And for me it was Bayldon Abbey and before I met the King.”

“Oh..”

“And to break me out of that took some doing. And the re-living of all of the years, and re-understanding what it meant. Amongst other things, that Juliana had lived her life thinking of herself as a widow. And there was more. Over the years there’s been so much and I had to re-learn it all… Deaths. Betrayals.” His shoulder was trembling against hers and she put a hand on his upper arm to steady him. “Which was - must have been the trauma, I think.” He took a deep breath and released it. “Which is a very, very long answer to your wondering why I was in your barn.”

“You came here to rest, then.Good.It’s a good place to rest in.”

“Thank you.”

She said nothing, but lifted her face to his, to leave a kiss lightly on his cheek. “No thanks needed, William Palmer.”

***

It didn’t happen that morning: she was too unsure and too unsettled by his story. Instead, she went back to her weaving, to use the strange snowlight and he decided to mend the downstairs cistern.Then he cooked - and cooked well - so that she could finish off her weaving and take the photographs that she would send to Geoff down in London.It was already dark when her crow of delight brought him to the door of her workroom.

“That’s a good price, I see,” he said, on hearing the offer and seeing her glee. “Do you get that for all your pieces?”

“Depends.”

“Can I see?You have photographs of them, I assume?”

She grinned and twirled herself and the laptop around again before setting it down. “Yes, you can see them but -” her next step took her close to him and he did not move back out of the way. She put her arms around his neck. “Afterwards.”

“Afterwards,” he repeated as he bent to meet her kiss.

*

Afterwards was gratifyingly late.Jess lay listening to his slow breathing and smiled to think that even if he was immortal, he still fell asleep after sex like any ordinary man. Not, she thought a little smugly, that he had been ordinary. Far from it. Astonishingly good, in fact, and she felt as if her body had been treated as the rarest of gifts, as the most precious thing he had ever been offered. She had gained such confidence from the worshipful attention that she even now blushed to think of what she had done, how free she had felt to act, to explore. She had touched him in ways she never had touched Luke - and his response had been more sensitive and generous than she had ever experienced.

She lifted herself up on one elbow and slid a hand over his chest and down to his hip, appreciating the firm muscle and the tender hollow where the bone curved.

“Madam…” his voice held sleepy mock indignation. “Unhand me at once.”

“No,” she said and moved her hand so that he started with pleasurable shock.

“No. Actually, please don’t,” he said and grinned up at her. His hand cupped her head and drew her down for his kiss. “Jess, dear girl…”  
Her fingers were exploring him all over again, enjoying the exhilaration of new possession, new territory.She liked his voice, soft and appreciative even without words. Luke had - it had been hard to understand quite what he was thinking. But, perhaps -

“Do you mind?” she asked, a sudden backwash of memory making her confidence falter.

“How could I mind?” he demanded and then realising that she was serious, he gently touched her face. “Sweeting, how could I mind? You are beautiful and delightful… and does that feel as though I minded?” He moved her hand to where incontrovertible evidence lifted between his legs. “This is the way all men dream of being woken, trust me.” He kissed her softly. “‘Mind’ indeed.”

_Not all men_, she wanted to say but his hand was touching her breast, cupping her carefully and moving with a firm confidence, arousing her even more and she lost the thought in pleasure. She could feel herself wanting him with an urgency that she had thought was foreign to her.She waited for a while to enjoy the feeling and then slid her leg over his hips. 

His smile was wide and welcoming as his strong hands moved her over him. “I’m all yours, sweetheart.”

“How wonderful.” This was something that Luke had deeply disapproved of; any initiative had to be his and on his terms. She had never had any man lie there, under her control. “Mine for the taking?” she asked, and moved a little, feeling him slide along her and hearing his soft gasp.

“Oh, yes. Please. Please, take me?”

*

Afterwards proved, in the end, to be next morning, when, slightly sore and aching but very relaxed, she slid out of William Palmer’s arms and went to use the bathroom. She took a long appraising look at herself in the mirror after her shower and noted her body as something almost new, defined by another’s appreciation of it. She had forgotten to notice the neatness, the small breasts and the curve of the hip, the muscles of arm and leg.She grinned at herself and got dressed, trying to pretend that it was a day like any other.

“If it’s a bacon-and-egg morning,” came a deep voice from under the duvet, “I may get up. Otherwise, I might just stay here.”

She went over to the bed. “Don’t tell me you’re worn out?”

“Totally.”Then, at her silence, he stirred and pushed back the covers, holding his arms out. “Jess… Don’t look like that. Come here.”

When she was on the bed, being held and being kissed with an easy strength that belied his words, she managed a grin to match his. “I don’t think you need bacon and eggs.”

“No. I don’t. And you don’t need all these clothes on, do you?”

“It’s eight o’clock.”

“Yes. And?” His hands were rather relentlessly working at zip and buttons, warm palms sliding over her skin. “Have you any urgent appointments?”

“But - it’s morning.” She rather undermined her own position by helping him to push her jeans down and off.

“Yes. And it’s still snowing. We might well be snowed in. It’s cold outside. And this bed is warm and there’s a man in it who would dearly love some company,” he said and pushed his hand into her knickers, fingers curving about her. “If you don’t mind, that is?”

“Er… No.”

“No you mind, or no, you don’t?” He kissed her, deep and hard and she arched up against him, her hips driving her down on his fingers. He made a sound of satisfaction and she got the feeling that his whole focus was there, on her, on her pleasure.

“No, I don’t mind,” she whispered and clung to his shoulders as he worked his fingers in her, causing deep ripples of sensation. She gasped, “I don’t mind in the slightest.”

He was smiling as he kissed her. “Good.” He rolled her on to her back. “But you would tell me if you did?”

  
She was silent and he stopped, gazing down at her. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

“It - It would depend.”Luke, sweating and straining over her, furious already without being told he was hurting her. She would bite her lip and let him get to his climax as quickly as possible, trying not to cry.

This man was also frowning but his eyes were kind. “Jess…? Sweetheart, no.” His hands had become comforting and gentle in that moment of her silence. “It wouldn’t ‘depend’ on anything, except you.” He held her close, his lips on her hair. “Don’t ever allow me - allow anyone - to do something you don’t want. Please.”

She lay and watched his face for a moment. “William… I do want you.And I haven’t had to lie to you.”

“‘Had to lie’? Dear heavens, Jess.”

“He didn’t mean to hurt me,” she said quickly.

“This is Luke, I take it?” His voice had deepened, so that she could feel the vibration through his chest. She nodded and felt his arms tighten about her. “And you miss this piece of -? You miss him?”

“I…” she started to answer that of course she missed him, but stopped. If that was so, how come she had spent the night making love to another man? And, by all the signs, was about to spent quite a lot of the morning doing so as well? “I think I’ve got used to being without him. It’s been a long time.”

His out breath was very controlled as if he was wanting to say something he knew he shouldn’t. “Ten years.”

She knew what he meant. “It wasn’t bad all the time.Just - he could get a bit… He didn’t like me to - to do anything, much.”

His eyes were wide with astonishment and then he was laughing softly and kissing her, her forehead, eyes, nose, lips, throat. “He had no idea,” was all she heard before he was laying another siege to her sense of duty and routine.

*

He cheerfully shovelled snow while the light lasted, and saw to the livestock while she parcelled up her work in careful layers.She didn’t arrange its delivery yet, though: the track to the main road looked as though it had filled completely and any sensible courier van would baulk at venturing down it.

After more hot tea, they settled on the old sofa and she showed him her work, enjoying his slow and detailed appreciation of each photograph.He was very taken with the one she had called ‘Ice and Fire II’; turning back to the several photos and looking so carefully that she accused him of pretence even though she knew better.Now she could see the craftsman in him, in his fingers and in his gaze.

After supper, they continued in quiet company, William Palmer reading Dickens while she spun more yarn by the firelight.Once, she caught him gazing at her as she worked, his expression thoughtful and reminiscent.

“You coming up to bed?” she asked once ten o’clock had struck and he was once again dozing over his book.

He made a noise of affirmation and closed the volume. “You want to be left alone to sleep?”

She considered. “Do you?”

“I asked first.”

“Then no. But just sleeping is fine.”

His smile was a delight to her and he followed her up.

*

The room was cold at the clock on her side of the bed was showing three in the morning when she hear his voice speaking in a whisper from near the window. The snowlight illuminated him, his old greatcoat dragged over his shoulders.

“My lord, you do yourself no great honour,” he said, clearly annoyed but restraining himself, “to demand my attendance in a lady’s chamber.”

“And such a fair lady, too, Pilgrim.” The answering voice was hushed and dry, like whispering leaves in the darkness. “You always had a good eye, you always had.”

“And you, Mr Fairley, should know better.”

A considering noise then, “I - I agree with you, Pilgrim. And I apologise for the discourtesy.”

“I accept the apology,” William Palmer said and she watched him incline his head a little. “What does your lordship want with me?”

“Ah… To be spoken to with respect once more. Rare in these times.”

“And your wish, my lord?”

“Ah, always direct. So refreshing, it really is. I wish an insult to be wiped from my reputation, Pilgrim. An insolent mortal has traduced my honour and I would have the matter addressed.”

“I see.And how has this happened, Mr Fairley?”

“The moving of the stones, the moving of the stones…”

“Stones?”

“Yes! Even now, they stand where they should not stand and they cannot perform the function that they once performed and my powers are reduced to a trickle of what they once were.”

_Oh, God_, Jess thought. _Those bloody stones.I knew it would lead to trouble. I just knew it._

“And when did this insult occur, my lord?”

“I have waited seven of your hotblood years. Waited for one to appear where he was needed - you, Pilgrim.I must say, you took your time.”

“Is that why I am here?” He did not sound pleased. “I had thought - I thought -”

“You thought to find solace for your poor wounded spirit, Pilgrim?” The scorn was accompanied by laughter, harsh even as it was quiet. “Poor sad Pilgrim, never to find rest.Even with so a fair a one as that. Songs have been sung about your sojourn in Caudely Fair, and your bitter torments… Poor tortured Pilgrim.It was very affecting. Many wept, I can assure you.”

“Most kind,” Palmer said, irony in every syllable. “And what will you do for me?”

“I will sing your praises, of course.”

“I am delighted to hear it but such is not the basis for an accord. And would this mortal who dishonoured you be Luke Tredaway, by any chance?”

“It would.”

“And why cannot you, my lord, deal with him yourself?”

There was a hissing and Palmer flinched and cried out, before shoving his arm over his mouth. Sound came muffled through thick wool.

“Insolence! I will not have it. I will not.”

“My lord, please!” his voice was thin, a gasp. “I just thought -”

“Enough. You think too much.” There was a pause and Palmer slowly lowered his arm. She could hear his rapid breathing.“The Old Woman has him.I find myself - I find myself unequal to her powers.She must release him so that I may deal with him.”

“What will you do with him and why does she hold him?” She could still hear pain in the tension in his voice.

“Speak to her, Pilgrim.”

“We have no accord, my lord, I will remind you. And you have not answered me.”

The pause this time was longer and Jess shivered under the covers, her body suddenly covered in goosebumps.

“I can bring cold into this place.Such cold. Cold to the heart’s core. She will never feel warm again.” The voice was soft and sinister.

“She has done nothing!”

“That is not my concern, Pilgrim, though she is clearly yours. Do we have an accord?”

“Not yet. What will you do with Luke Tredaway?” He sounded quite assertive and she braced for the person called Fairley to hurt him again. It didn’t happen. Instead, there was a thoughtful noise.

“That need not concern you, William Palmer.I will give you three days before I run ice into your lady’s veins.”

“Three days? Mr Fairley, that is too little time!”

“Three days. Do we have an accord?’

“But - ”

A rush of air swirled into the room, as icy as meltwater, drenching Jess. She gritted her teeth but there was laughter.

“Your lady is awake, Pilgrim. Shivering very prettily. You will need to warm her.”

“Mr Fairley…” Again, his voice was more assertive than she would have thought was safe. He was clearly warning.

“Do we have an accord?”

She heard him take a very deep breath. “Yes, my lord. We have an accord.”

And the room was empty, the cold ebbing away. He was silent and still for a long time, then slowly came back to the bed, shedding the coat and slipping between the sheets. She moved to put her arms around his chilled body.

“Are you all right?” she whispered the question. “He hurt you. Are you injured?”

“No,” he sounded tired. “Mr Fairley has - other methods then the purely physical. They do, some of them. I’m fine. Are you all right?”

“What’s an accord?”  
His arms were about her and between them, the warmth was building again. “It’s an agreement, a deal. Greyfolk will do that - it’s probably the only thing they recognise.And if you break an agreement, songs get sung. Reputation gets damaged… It sounds arcane, I know.”

“Mr Fairley is greyfolk?”

“A bitter spirit. I have never worked with him before, sadly, or I might have been able to do better. I’m sorry.” He touched her hair. “I promise, I will do what I can. But… Luke?You said you didn’t know why he’d left. Can you tell me anything?”

She moved closer into his side. “When that - when Mr Fairley mentioned the stones. Luke was annoyed by them. They used to stand in the pasture - Cottar’s - and he felt that they were in the way. He wanted to put the pasture down to arable and they would have got in the way of the farm machinery. So he got some earth-moving equipment and he moved them.All on his own because no-one round here would help.”

“Where did he move them to?”

“Long Meadow.”

“Is that the one with the little hillock in it?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

She felt him shiver and tightened her arms around him.

“Heaven help me.You do know that’s a barrow, don’t you?”

*

That afternoon they walked out to Long Meadow, after a disagreement about whether or not he should go alone. The day was quietly dying, a few flakes of snow still falling from a sky as colourless as mist, and the snow lay a few inches thick, the top crunching as the temperature dropped.

The hillock was small, a slight rise no longer than ten feet long and the stones were also low, no more than two or three feet high, hardly shaped and standing to the sides of the barrow. Two groups of three. William Palmer, looking as he had when she had first seen him in his shabby greatcoat, his head uncovered, took his hands out of his pockets and told her to stay where she was.Unwilling to argue now that they were here in the biting cold, she nodded and drew the collar of her sheepskin higher around her neck.

She watched him step forward to where the ground began to rise and then go down on his knees in the snow. He carefully laid what he’d brought with him on the ground, moving the snow away. Grains of wheat, a twist of raw wool and a scattering of salt.

“Lady of Long Meadow, I come to you from the housestead.” His voice was resonant, and she should have found the situation silly except for a memory of a hissing disembodied voice and the cold in her veins. “I come to you with gifts, Lady.”

The snow glittered, sparkling on the top and sides of the fenceposts and the lifting long grasses about their feet. The cold seemed to bite harder and the silence of the field was only underlined by the faint slow labouring of a lorry or something equally heavy along the distant main road.Jess felt as if she were holding her breath, as if making any sudden sound or sudden move would precipitate something unknown and dangerous.

“Who comes?”

She nearly yelled with shock.The words were breathy, like the wind. Recognisably female and old, very old. She stared at the barrow and the man who knelt at its foot but there was nothing else there. 

Or.Perhaps…Perhaps there was a thickening of the mist.

“William Palmer comes.”

“Ah… Pilgrim…” The breathy voice was considering.

“Yes.”

A silence and a small wind circled him, loose snow swirling up, then falling again.

“And what do you bring me?”

“Gifts of the house and hearth, Lady.”

Snow drifted about the surface of the hillock, as if snaking breezes stirred it. Jess could feel no movement in the air at all but flakes of snow were circling the stones. The wool moved a little, dancing from left to right and back again.

“Wool for the weaving and grain for the baking and salt to season all… Good hearth gifts.And what would Pilgrim want from me in return for these gifts?”

“Nothing, great lady,” he said and Jess wanted to shout out in protest. She clenched her fists in her pockets. _‘Trust me.’_ he’d said and so she stayed silent, listening as he continued. “It is enough that our humble gifts find favour with one so venerable and so honourable.”

“It is some time since I was so addressed, Pilgrim. The housesteadings forget.”

“Not all do, great lady. Some have brought you gifts greater than these.”

“Ah, you speak of the stones…” the voice tailed off and then there was thready laughter. “That was indeed a great gift and great was the honour.”

“Indeed so.And the one who brought them to you -”

“He was made welcome, as was right.Most welcome.”

Jess shook snowflakes from her fringe and tried not to shiver as the conversation went on, circuitous and courtly as if in some medieval fantasy.Finally, Palmer mentioned Luke’s name.

“He is greatly missed,” she heard him say. “Might he not want to return to the housestead he left?”

“Why?”

“He is the housecarl.Without him, the fields go unploughed by the rightful hand… His hand is not the one that orders, that works the land. His place is at Frensham Farm, lady, however great your hospitality.”

Again, that dry light laugh. “I heard that his place is filled, William Palmer, and that yours is that hand that orders, that provides.”

“Not so, great lady!The wyfman orders - and she cannot do all. It is for him to return to take up his place and the honours of his place. I am Pilgrim; I cannot stay in any place. You know that the King has commanded this.”

At his words, Jess’s blood ran cold without the help of any greyfolk curse.

So. He would be gone and Luke back, if he had his way.

She thought of Palmer’s laughter and the speechless assurances of his hands and his lips and his body in her bed - while all the time, it seemed, he was intending to be gone. She felt sick. Sick and cold and crushed.

“Lady, it is not right that the steading should be without the care of wyfman and carlman.”

“Does she want him back?” the ancient voice demanded. “Or are you winding about me with your courtesies?”

“I cannot speak for her but he is mortal man and mortal men cannot stay in your house for long.”

“He brought me the stones.”

Jess watched Palmer, his spine straight as he knelt, his hair stirring in the small breezes, as if invisible hands stroked fingers through it. “He did.”

“Brought back that which never should have been taken. Long time I waited.”

His head tilted as he listened and there was an appreciable pause before he spoke. “Taken, great lady?”

“Long time gone, time on time… They guarded the place. They stood for the meeting of earth and sky and they were taken.”

“By -?”

“By that which calls itself Fairley. Took them for the power, for the power of earth which he was not heir to. For the power of sky he had no right to.” The old voice was sharp and hard. “Lies, that one.”

“He does, lady.”

“Pay no heed to his song.”

Palmer shook his head and looked up at the white skies beginning to darken. “And can he not take them back again?”

“No!Not this time!He has not the strength and I have my warrior now. Fresh blood, William Palmer. Fresh blood freely given.”

“Did Luke Tredaway know what he was giving?”

“Do you question his choice?”

“I beg your pardon, Lady of Long Meadow. I meant no offence. Hotblood is not greyfolk and sometimes there can be misunderstanding…”

“No offence is taken. There was no mistake. Go now, Pilgrim. Go back to the steading.”

He bowed his head and the stirring airs softly fell, letting go the slight burden of ice crystals and snow to fall on hair and shoulders and ground.The skies were getting darker and as Palmer got stiffly to his feet, snow started to fall once more.

*

He looked frozen, clothes wet with snowmelt when he came to where she stood.

“Not quite what I expected,” he said in his laconic manner.

Jess stared at him. “And you can be sure it wasn’t what I expected either. You didn’t tell me you’d be giving Luke to Fairley. I thought it was the stones you were going to restore,” she said, wanting to accuse him of more personal treachery but not willing to reduce herself. “And how did you know?Where he’d gone?”

“I - I had an idea about it, the consequences of an act like that.I can’t leave Luke there if it’s against his will, can’t you see? I’m not going to hand him over to Fairley.Not if I can help it.” He looked away for a moment at the snow-filled air that darkened over the barrow. “The trouble between you and he can be sorted out, sorted out without using greyfolk as an excuse and believe me, it’s better that way.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ll argue with you all you like but not here.”

“I don’t want Luke back in my life,” she said curtly. “Even if you decide to leave right now, I wouldn’t want him back and don’t you try and finesse me into taking him. I was alone before you came and I’ll be alone afterwards.I know I can do it.”

His eyes were palest grey, silver in the snowlight and he came closer, reaching to touch her arm. “Jess, don’t, please.I know I can’t stay; my life won’t let me. And you wouldn’t want me to; be honest.”

“Honest?”What was honest? “That’s fine, coming from you.” She turned her back and stalked back to the house, the need to keep from crying so fierce that she paid little heed to the weather or the strangeness of what she had just witnessed, stamping down their tracks and keeping well ahead of William Palmer.

*

She had to face him eventually. She had the key to the door and had to pause to unlock it, which meant that he was not far behind her when she stepped over the threshold. He stopped outside.

“What are you doing?”

He was looking tired now, his face serious and shadowed. He still had both hands thrust into his pockets and his shoulders were hunched. When he replied to her it was in a tone of quiet desperation. “Jess, I’m not coming in uninvited. It would be wrong.You’ve seen what you’ve seen and you’ve every right to change your mind now you know what - What sort of trouble I might bring you.” He looked away at the barn. “I won’t impose.I’ll do what I can to deal with Fairley and I’ll be gone from here as soon as I’ve done it.”

“You want to leave.”

“No!” He shook his head vehemently. “No. But I think it would be best and if I could just sleep in the barn for a couple of nights -”

“I told you you weren’t doing that and you won’t. You either come in or you leave this farm right now.”

“But -”

She was furious with him for forcing her to invite him in when she wanted a quarrel. She was furious with him for having fitted into her life so smoothly that being without him was loss she didn’t want to think about.She was furious with him for him standing there, weary, dishevelled and uncertain, and furious with herself for wanting to seize him, drag him over the doorstep and pull him into her arms. _Damn_ the man.

“Get in here, William Palmer. Right now.”

He obeyed and she slapped him across the face as hard as she could. “That’s for being arrogant and unthinking.” She reached round while he was putting one hand to his face, and slammed the door closed, ramming the bolt home unnecessarily firmly. “Kitchen. Now.”

The mark of her displeasure was dull red on his cheek and she thought it might bruise quite impressively. She made him take off his coat and sit close to the Aga, then she shoved a mug of the tea they’d left stewing into his hands.

“I’m sorry.”

She tilted her head. “I won’t ask what for.I think there’s quite a choice.” Her dry tone made his mouth twitch as if he was trying not to smile.

“Yes.” He ducked his head and then looked straight at her, his gaze direct and unflinching. “I hope you weren’t too alarmed.”

“Well,” she considered, “the thing was already pretty weird before we got there.” She had been bemused by his sorting through the bread flour for wholegrains and dismantling her salt mill for the last of the rock salt. “So what’s one disembodied voice more or less? But Mr Fairley lied to you.”

Palmer made a non-committal sort of sound. “I don’t believe he did,” he said slowly, clearly thinking over the conversation. “I don’t think he precisely claimed that the stones were originally his.Not that it matters, greyfolk can and do lie as much as we do.I know what it means, love. I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”

“Is that a promise you can keep?”

He stood and took her into his arms, pulling her close into him and holding her there, as if in defiance of something that would wrest her away. “I will do everything in my power to keep it. I will.”

Strangely, she felt reassured. It didn’t feel as if he wanted to go.

***

The snow fell almost without stopping through the next day. Jess could see that Palmer was worried; he was inclined to go off into thought for long periods and he did not hum and sing about his work that she could hear.He continued to work much as before.He chopped wood and fed the stock then started the Herculean task of sorting out the old shed with its tangle of rusting ancient machinery and equally ancient spiders’ webs.His face was, indeed, bruised. She did not feel guilty.

Progress was halted when he had another argument with Prince which resulted in his left hand being badly bitten and the horse getting soundly thumped on the nose. She’d heard the swearing from where she had just completed the warping of her loom, and was in the kitchen with with arnica and a bowl of hot water at the ready when he stamped in.

“That is one evil horse,” he informed her as she lowered his hand into the water.She’d run antiseptic into the bowl and he hissed as the stuff stung his raw skin. “The canning factory’s too good.”

“I know. I heard you telling him so. Amongst other things. Quite an inventive account of his ancestry.” She gently passed cotton wool over the hand to clean it. “You can move your fingers?Good… His owners pay good rates for his livery.”

“I can quite see why they don’t want to look after him themselves.” She was wrapping a clean teatowel round his hand to dry it. “I hope you are getting danger money?”

“I might give them a call, say we’re stopping livery. They only really take him out every now and then. He used to be the eldest boy’s but he’s gone to university now.For all I know, they’ve forgotten Prince altogether.” She took another look at his hand and passed him the arnica, to start smoothing it on.He did so very gingerly indeed. “You’ll need a bit of bandaging on that, just to give it some support.”

“I should be all right,” he protested but then tried to put his palm down flat on the table and yelped. She looked at him, eyebrows raised until he laughed and capitulated.

“We’ll keep putting arnica on it - it’ll feel much better very quickly, and look very dramatic.Very heroic.”

*

As he could do nothing much for the rest of the afternoon, she got him to look at the farm accounts, though ‘manipulated’ would have been a better term. She was unsure whether he would be _au fait_ with computers but seeing him plunging into the spreadsheets which gave her so many problems and sorting through her chaotic receipts like a man with a mission, amused her. It helped him, keeping his mind occupied, and it certainly helped her. He came through to supper with a printout in his hand and a wry expression on his face.

“Jess, do you realise that you are sitting on several thousand pounds in your current account? And your farm subsidies are all over the place?” he asked her as she ladled pasta on to his plate. He slid the paper over to her side of the table as he sat. “And you really ought to set up direct debits - it’d stop you getting bad-tempered letters from your feed people for a start.”

“I think I worry that I won’t be able to cover them,” she said. “To be honest, I’m not that good with finance.” The look on his face made her laugh. “All right: you guessed that. How’s your hand?”

After supper, she checked the bandage and blinked at the dark blue and crimson of his hand. The bruise on his face had darkened, too. She would have to be gentle with him, he said.

***

“Mr Fairley! I demand that you appear to me, Mr Fairley.”

The yard next morning was empty of everything except snow and - and then it wasn’t. Opposite the straight figure of William Palmer was a brown column, which resolved itself into a thin man in a dark brown suit. Looking from the loom, Jess felt there was something odd about his proportions, something not quite connected about the way he stood, as if he was trying to hold a pose that he was unused to.

“Good day, sweet Pilgrim,” came the voice she had heard before but she got the sense that although the lips were moving, the sound was not coming from them. The face was thin, foxy-sharp and the hair was the same dark brown as his clothing.

William Palmer gave a small bow, an inclination of the head. “And to you, my lord.”

“And do you have the miserable hotblood for me?”

“No, I do not.”

The thin figure stretched up an impossible foot or so and loomed over the man. “Then you have but a day before your lady becomes a true ice maiden.”

“You lied to me,” Palmer said. “Or rather you led me to believe that the stones were yours. They have been returned to their rightful owner and I cannot get them back for you. Not is it right that you should have them.”

The hissing was like an enraged snake. “Not right? Not right? Who are you to say what is right and what is not, you misbegotten ditchspawn…? Not your place, Pilgrim.”

“It is my place. My place to say what I will or I will not do and I will not get you Tredaway or the stones.”

“Then,” the malevolence was icy acid, “your sweet pretty lady pays the consequences.”

“No.”

“We had an accord, dear Pilgrim. Keep your side of the bargain and I will keep mine.

“And if I appeal to the King?”

This time there was laughter, edged and malicious. “The king!He might love you, sweet Pilgrim, but he does not love hotbloods and he would not care if I stripped the flesh from that one’s bones and flung them to the dogs - even to spare you pain.” There was another chuckle. “And, let’s face it, who can blame him? Horrible things, most of them: quite disgusting.” The brown man seemed to waver, as if he were made of smoke which was now dispersing. “Tomorrow then, at Long Meadow Barrow. Shall we say first light?So atmospheric, don’t you think?The hotblood Tredaway and then I can get the stones for myself. Either him or your ladylove. Your choice, as ever.”There was only the faintest outline on the air. “She _is_ your ladylove, I take it?”

“I’d be a fool to tell you, wouldn’t I?”

There was the faintest mocking laughter. “Ah but, Pilgrim, you _are_ a fool, aren’t you?”

*

Jess took her seat again, facing the warp, and a decision came to her. Not the design she had been thinking of at all.

It took only a few moments to find the wools and the threads that she wanted, as if they had been lying there awaiting this idea, and then she set to work, sending the weft flying through the strong threads, shaping the story she wanted told. A tale of snow and winter and the safety of home and hill… Silver in hand, she outlined a flow, a current of something that connected, through the darker colours and the smaller areas of warmth. Each connecting to each. Each depending on each. The packed threads began to fill the warp and she found a tune going round in her head as she worked.

She told him to go to bed without her, when the time came. She’d eaten because he had insisted but a bowl of soup had not taken long and she had been back at her work within fifteen minutes. 

“Jess, drink this, please.”

“It’s fine,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll be up later.”

A hand on her shoulder and a kiss on her cheek, then he had put his fingers over hers.

“You need to drink something, sweetheart. It won’t take long and then you can carry on.”

It was quicker not to argue. She drained the cup and gave it back before she really tasted it. Warm sweet and spicy - cider, she thought at its base. Not too strong.

“Go to bed.”

William Palmer refilled the cup and gave it to her, his eyes steady on hers. “I think I’d better stay here, while you work. Just in case.”

“What?”

“Fairley is not the most honourable of beings. I don’t trust him not to move early and you are so deep in your own spell,” he took the cup back again, “you’d never notice.”

“I’m only weaving,” she protested.

“I know. And I’m staying.”

*

The hours passed with Palmer sitting on the floor by the door, his injured hand cradled in his lap, his quiet presence no interruption. She’d had Charlie at her feet in earlier years and he’d made much more noise than the man by the door.

The web grew under her hands…

*

The final threads seemed to fly into their places, as if satisfied to be there.Jess picked out the gold and the black that she wanted and needle-wove them through the fabric, a frond here and there, a suggestion of a curve of leaf, of stem. Finally, it was the noise of her removing the piece from the frame made the figure by the door look up.

He was stiff with sitting so still and silent for so many hours but came over to her, his right hand on her shoulder, warm and firm on the tired muscles.

“How did it go?” he asked and she moved to let him see. This time, his breath was near her cheek as he leaned over but the awe was the same.

“My… Good heavens, but that really is magic,” he said softly and she turned her head to kiss him. “And - and I’m in there too?”

She was delighted that he had read her work correctly. The palm leaf was elusive, only appearing as a half-seen thing or a suggestion. But the farm and and the fields were there, lines of rolling colour, the sparkle of snowlight drifted across them, and the low rise of the barrow, and the lines of fences and the bulk of the woodland. All of Frensham Farm here, in its solid everyday existence, claiming its own power from the land.

He returned her kiss and they hugged tightly for a long moment, body to body.

“It’s nearly day,” she said as they eased away a little. William Palmer looked serious and nodded.

“You don’t have to come -” he started but stopped as soon as she looked at him. “All right. But please, if I tell you to do something, do it.Don’t ask questions. Just do it.” He glanced down at himself. “I need to change.”

*

The snow had stopped falling and the woods were a vision of silver grey, hoar frost outlining every twig in a fantasy of winter.The snow-filled fields were almost too pure to walk in and only when Palmer took her hand did she feel able to cross them.

“It’s yours, remember,” his low voice was warm and intimate. “And you carry it with you.”

“If you are going to get all mystical on me, I will probably laugh. And in the wrong place.”

He stopped and pulled her round to face him. His expression was its most serious, as austere as a carving on a cathedral. “Jess. You’re about to enter the other realm. There’s no other way of saying this but it is not the usual world.The usual rules don’t apply. Please. Remember.”

She reached up and kissed the severe lips. “I’ll remember. I’m with a man who’s over 850 years old. How can I forget?”

He gave her another look. “And, anyway,” there was the trace of a smile, “I was serious. You do carry it with you.” He nudged the folded cloth under her arm.

She linked her free arm with his and they walked on.

The sun, blood-red and hazy, rose tentatively above the horizon, and suddenly the snow was washed with pink, blushing with colour where it had been a vision in monochrome only minutes before. It was slow in its rising and they were at the Long Field before it was halfway up, gathering strength and sending shadows streaming across the snow.

She couldn’t have said when she became aware of passing from her world into the other; there was no jolt, no sign.Except, on the edge of vision, she could see other figures to left and right of the stones with their white tracery of snow and frost. Tall, short, becoming clearer and, when she looked straight at them, she felt such unease that she wished she had taken his advice to stay at the farmhouse. They seemed to be coming into focus gradually.

And then they were there. Improbable; fantastical. She could see snouts and claws as well as human-shaped arms and bodies. Wings. Strange tattered garments. And with Palmer having changed into the clothes he had worn when he slept in her barn, bruised and with one hand bandaged, he looked akin to them, ragged and half-wild.

Palmer stopped, keeping hold of her hand as he scanned the gathering and made a low bow that encompassed them all.There was an answering wave of bowing and dipping.

“And this is your ice maiden? How delightful,” the tall brown figure of Mr Fairley came to stand in front of them. Close to, he looked less human, more fox-like, weasel-like with a narrow muzzle and sharp incisors that overlapped his lower lip.

“This is the wyfman of Frensham Farm,” Palmer said loudly, introducing her to the company rather than answering Fairley. His hand was gripping hers tightly. “Long has her line lasted.”

There was a twittering and murmuring and then the assembly dipped and bowed to her. Feeling foolish but also overawed, she made a clumsy curtsey, completely aware of her old sheepskin, knitted hat and heavy walking boots.

“I have no idea why you have called such a crowd to witness the business between us, Pilgrim,” Fairley said and moved closer to speak in a lower voice to the man alone, “but it will do you no good. The accord holds. You give me back that which was mine or your lady becomes as winter to you and to herself.”

“I summoned no-one, Mr Fairley,” Palmer said. “I have no idea why so many greyfolk are here. I thought you called them.”

Jess found Fairley’s look of dismay almost comical. “Then why should -?”

“Why should so many gather?”

The same voice, Jess knew. The same voice that she had heard speaking out of the barrow to William Palmer kneeling in the snow at its foot, but this was a younger version. She glanced up at him, but his attention was focussed on the barrow itself and the white misty column that rose from it.

“They gather because I would have it so, Fairley.”

Palmer’s hand was tugging at her, pulling her down to kneel.

“Great lady, we salute you,” he said quietly. “I present Jess Desmoins of Frensham Farm.”

When she dared look up, once she’d regained her balance, Jess saw a tall, white-clad woman with long, long dark hair that stirred in a breeze she herself could not feel. And she was stunningly beautiful.

The woman smiled kindly enough on her. “Ah, yes…. Long time the Desmoins have tended the place. I greet you, daughter of the land.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, her mouth dry and, in answer to a brief squeeze of his hand, she added, “Great lady.”

“This,” Fairley’s voice was sharp and grating after the soft resonant tones of the barrow-spirit, “has absolutely nothing to do with the court and there is no reason to waste the time of so many important and powerful spirits.” He glared around him. “No reason at all.”

“Save that you threaten one of my people,” the woman said, tranquilly. “The Desmoins were sworn to me before time began. They are my charge and you threaten one of them. You threaten the land, Fairley. You cannot think to do so and get away with it?”

“I threaten no-one,” he shot back tartly. “Pilgrim made an accord, to return the stones to me, and he has broken it. Or I assume he will break it. He says he will.”

“He cannot give you what he does not have,” the woman’s voice was level and calm. “He should not give you what _you_ should not have. When you held the stones, the land suffered. The living was hard and no reverence was paid where it should have been paid.”

Palmer was getting up and helping her to her feet while the two spirits spoke together, and he moved her back a little as if to remove her from their attention.

“No, you don’t, Pilgrim!” Fairley snapped. “You stay where you are and you don’t move.”

He halted and Jess clung to his arm, terrified. He glanced down at her and gave her a brief smile. “You’re doing fine,” she heard him whisper.

“Ooh - is she, indeed?” Fairley’s voice sneered. “I wonder how fine she’ll do with her soul turned to ice? And what will you do then, Pilgrim? Break your poor heart all over again? Although I can’t quite believe how many times _that’s_ happened in the thousand years or so. Hotbloods - so predictable.”

“Fairley, your quarrel is with me and with the land. Can you deny it?”

Sulkily, he conceded, “Mostly. Though doing old Pilgrim a bad turn always has its attractions. Yes, lady, I want the stones and I claim them. I possessed them for at least five hundred years. It gives me some rights.”

“Five hundred hotblood years? Hardly a strong claim.”

The assembly murmured and twittered at this and Fairley whipped round. “And you can stay out of it!”

In the silence that followed, the woman spoke again. “If you can take them, you may.”

“And how can I do that when you have abducted a hotblood to be your warrior?”

Another susurration of comment and Fairley glared around. “He’s unfairly held - Pilgrim will tell you so, won’t you, Pilgrim?That famous compassion extends even to the man whose bed you have stolen, whose wife you have taken, whose place you have usurped. Doesn’t it?” There was a pause while the company exchanged comments on this and Palmer’s grip was briefly tight. “Won’t you say something, William Palmer?Usually so vocal, yet now so strangely quiet. You say he should be freed. Then, lady, I will take back that which I desire.”

Palmer dropped Jess’s hand and went forward to address the strange beings gathered around the stones.

“Your honours, I merely questioned whether Luke Tredaway was with the Lady of Long Meadow of his own choice.Hotblood does not always understand greyfolk ways, as you know, my lords and ladies. I sought to know the truth from Luke Tredaway himself.That is all.” She could hear the desperation in his voice: to free Luke would be to allow Fairley to win. And she had the feeling that Fairley’s victory would be a disaster for them all - and yet, he wanted Luke’s freedom, too.Which left her where?

“Well, then,” the woman’s cool, calm voice was undisturbed. “I would say that we ask him.”

The sun had cleared the horizon and the light was less red, and somehow, less focussed. The audience appeared to have increased. Jess felt very alone, watching as both Fairley and Palmer stared at the woman standing at the top of the barrow.

She moved one long, graceful arm and shadow bloomed before Jess’ eyes, an impossible opening in the earth.From the darkness stepped a tall figure in some sort of armour, helmeted and weighty. She could see that there was a sword… Something in her jumped with mingled alarm and wonder.It _looked_ like Luke. It moved like Luke moved but with more purpose. More focus, somehow.

How could it be Luke?

Both Fairley and Palmer stepped back, and William’s hand was reaching for hers.

“No,” she said and he gave her a look she could not interpret.

There was a hush across the field.

“Luke Tredaway?” It was William’s deep voice that broke the silence.

“Who calls?”

It was Luke’s voice. Blunt and straight-forward.

“I call,” the woman said coolly. “Fairley would have the stones returned to him.”

The sword rose in the gauntleted hands. “He can try.”

The response from the assembled creatures was clearly excited and approving.

“And Pilgrim wants you to remain in the hill.” Fairley hurried into speech. “He seeks to take your place,” the voice was sly. “Your place. Your farm. Your woman.”

The swordspoint shifted, moving towards Palmer. Jess held her breath as she watched the armed man move towards the still figure of William Palmer.

“Pilgrim?” There was little between them in height though the ragged figure was much slighter. “You? How can you take my place?” The sword lifted, and the point came to rest against Palmer’s chest. Jess could see the denting of the thick wool coat made by the metal as it was pressed harder.

“I do not seek to do so,” Palmer’s voice was calm but she could hear the effort required to keep it so. He wasn’t moving. “How can any take what is not to be taken?”

“He seeks to cozen you, Luke - he is trying to confuse you… So he can keep what is rightfully yours.”

“No!” The vehemence was startling. “Luke, you know that Jess is not for the taking. She is her own. She always was.” He moved smoothly sideways, away from her, as if he wanted to ensure that Luke’s attention did not fall on her. The sword’s point did not move from his chest and as he stopped, the worn fabric of the coat gave way beneath it. He gave a quick gasp as the metal pressed further in. “I’m telling the truth and you know it.” He held out his empty hands. “I have no quarrel with you and I would not trick you.” He paused. “You could return if you wished. But I beg you, please don’t let Fairley have the stones.”

There was silence as Luke stood silent, considering.Then the sword lifted, was withdrawn and held upright again in his two hands.

“I am the Watcher. The Guardian. He cannot have them.”

She could see the relief in Palmer’s shoulders as he released a held breath. “Thank you,” she heard him say.

A thin hard hand whipped about her wrist, icy cold and she yelled with the shock of it.

“Then I will run ice through your lady’s heart and her veins and into her soul.” Fairley hissed. His grip grew harder and Jess cried out with the pain of it. “You can defeat the Watcher, Pilgrim.”

“I can’t,” Palmer said. “You know I can’t, Fairley! And this is beneath you, beneath your powers.”

“Then I do it to amuse myself,” Fairley snapped.

“Luke,” Palmer spoke to the huge man who stood silent and impassive. “Luke Tredaway.This is Jess, who you love. You loved her for ten years, you know you did.” His urgency was barely under control. “She loved you. She worked for you, cared for you - and you weren’t always kind.” His voice was compelling. “She stayed faithful to you, despite your leaving her. And you left her to run the farm all on her own. I know why you left and as Watcher and Guardian, you have your place, it seems. But you can’t see this done, surely?”

“I watch and I guard.”

“Jess is _part_ of what you guard, Luke! She is part of the land, part of the Lady’s domain.” He glanced across at her, briefly, then back to Luke. The weak sun shone dully on ancient metal. “You can save her. Please. I’m begging you, Luke. Look at her. Can you let Fairley torture her?”

The silence was profound and Jess, her aching arm going numb, cold reaching up to her shoulder now, could hardly breathe.

Luke seemed to have turned to stone. She couldn’t be sure he had even heard William’s words.And Palmer stood very still, his whole body taut.

She saw a flash only, the flash of weak light on metal, and from her left there was a screech. The grip on her wrist snapped open and she jerked away. Her wrist was white, white as frost and ached fiercely, and when she stumbled, her arm did not respond.

When she had found her feet again, she saw that Luke had moved and that Palmer had backed away from his line of attack.

And there was another breathy shriek, as the sword fell again. She thought she could hear the word ‘Pilgrim’ but the shouts and yells of those gathered about were suddenly loud and raucous and she closed her eyes, clapping her hands over her ears to prevent herself from hearing the dreadful screeching and rending.

It seemed a long time before Palmer’s arms were tight around her and she clung to him as if he had just saved her from drowning, saying his name almost silently over and over.

“It’s all right,” she heard him repeat as he held her, and she could feel that he was shaking. “It’s over, love. It’s all right.”

“My wrist…” she said, and his hand was over it, warm and vital. “It hurts.”

“It will be all right, I think,” his voice was tender, close and private. “We’ll get you home and see to it.”

They clung together for a long time, or so it seemed. When she moved, it felt as if hours had passed since that terrible tearing screaming.He rubbed her arm and she began to feel pins and needles down it, reaching into her hand.

“Is - what’s that?”

‘That’ was a heap of what looked like dried leaves on the snow, that began to scatter as she looked.

“Fairley.” He kissed her briefly on the forehead.“Sweetheart, Luke saved you. He didn’t let you down.”

She looked up and there it all still was: the barrow, the strange shapes of the audience around the stones and Luke, looming bulky in the armour, completely still, his face mostly shielded by the helmet. And the slender white figure of the lady. The sun, it seemed, had hardly moved.

“Oh… I thought it was over?”

“It is, love. Nearly. But you are safe.”

She scrubbed her eyes on the cold fleece of her sleeve. “I’m sorry to be so pathetic,” she said and cleared her throat. She detached his arms and then went cautiously towards Luke, looking up into his face. It hadn’t changed - or, if it had, it was calmer. He did not look so angry as he had. He looked almost as calm as the Lady of Long Meadow. “Luke?”

“Jess?” His voice was remote. He was looking at her as if she was someone he had known once but so long ago that he barely remembered. She marvelled that she felt so little for him.As if he, too, had just been some stranger glimpsed long time gone.

“Thank you.”

He bowed his head a little. The sword was still in his hands but point down. There was no blood on the blade.

“Are you - Are you okay?”

Another bow.

“I didn’t know where you were.”

“I went where I was needed. I am needed here.”

“Oh.” Jess flushed, thinking about their life and seeing that, in fact, she had never really needed him. And perhaps, his violent possession of her had been an attempt to make some claim, to force some confession of dependence. She glanced down then back up at his face, rose on her toes and planted a kiss on his lips, feeling them cool and unresponsive.

“I’m sorry. I hope - I think I understand.”

He bowed to her and stepped back towards the darkness, and was gone.

“Weaver,” the lady’s cool voice was still calm. “You will return to the farm, wyfman?”

“Yes,” she said then swallowed. “If William Palmer will stay, to be carlman.” She heard her own words as if something had spoken through her. Was ‘carlman’ even the right term?

There was laughter then, a slight ripple of laughter from the woman and more from the assembled spirits. Palmer stood still, his gaze on hers, his face as pale and serious as she had ever seen it. The bruising stood out starkly on his cheekbone.

“Well, Pilgrim?” the lady asked, amusement in her voice.

“I am honoured,” he said very formally, and bowed to Jess. “Truly. But I can’t stay.”

“Why not?”

Behind the barrow, there was a sudden harsh calling of carrion crows in the weak light. Palmer looked startled and everyone in the gathering around the stones seemed suddenly agitated. Wings clattered in the freezing air and then there was darkness standing next to the Lady on the mound, a tall dark figure, silver glinting at head and wrists, dark clothes like feathers cloaking it, shoulder to foot.

William Palmer went down on one knee, bending his head. “Your majesty.”

There was an accompanying rustle as the company also fell to their knees. Jess folded her arms over her cloth and decided that she was human and needn’t kneel to the King of the Grey Folk. That her eyes were brimming with tears made her feel even more stubborn.

“Greetings, Pilgrim.” The voice was dry, scratching and somehow multiplied, as if a flock of birds were speaking through one throat.

“You do us great honour, majesty,” Palmer said. 

A considering noise then the figure stirred, turning to the woman in white. “Greetings, Lady. Your Guardian slew Fairley?”

“Yes, lord. In defence of this land, as was his right.” The Lady did not kneel or bow and Jess got the feeling that she was as old or older than the King. “And in defence of the woman of the farm. There was obligation there.”

“And the obligation is fulfilled?”

“It is.”

“That is well, Lady.”The king, in a rustle of feathers, lifted one hand and both William Palmer and the assembled courtiers rose to their feet. “Pilgrim… The woman of the land has a claim on you?”

“No, she doesn’t.” His voice was cold and she wanted to smack him round the face again, to shock him out of this dreadful, icy, selfless mood. He sounded like stone speaking.

“Yes, she does,” she declared and walked to the foot of the mound. As she passed Palmer, she spoke to him out of the corner of her mouth, “You are a terrible man and I don’t know why I’m doing this.”She got to the foot of the mound and gave a little bow to the two figures who topped it. “I have a claim on him. He is woven into the land - see.”

The cloth, spread on the snow, glittered and glowed with the colours that she had woven into her pattern. The gold and the black of the palm leaves seemed to have worked their way into every part of the pattern, the warm shapes that were the living beings of the farm, and the lines and squares that were the land and its divisions.

“You have woven him into your spellcloth, Weaver?” the woman said, with cool interest.

“It is a strong pattern and you have woven well,” the dry croaking voice considered the cloth. “A strong spell, and Pilgrim is indeed caught in it.”

“My lord.You know what obligation you have laid me under,” Palmer was pleading. “I can’t stay. Jess, please.”

“I have a claim,” Jess repeated, ignoring him.The king’s face was very pale with a great beak of a nose and dark, sharp glittering eyes. “I claim him, Majesty, until I no longer have any further need of him. I claim him as carlman of Frensham.”

“And you, Pilgrim? Has she no claim on you? On your heart, perhaps?” Soft circumspect laughter greeted this, and William Palmer shook his head.

“What would it matter, Majesty?What possible difference would it make if I loved her? You have laid it upon me to journey without ending.” The bitterness in his voice surprised her and he wouldn’t meet her eye. “Whatever my desires might be, you know I cannot stay, my lord.”

“He might,” the Lady’s voice was detached in its intervention. “He might if your Majesty would grant that the land needs its human guardians for a time.After Fairley’s misbehaviour,I ask it of you. There is obligation here, I think, between you and I.”

The greyfolk king shifted, his cloak whispering. “And if I were to say that Fairley acted without my knowledge?”

“I would say that so great a king surely knows all that passes in his realm.”

Jess kept silent, her heart pounding hard. She glanced across at where William Palmer stood and saw that he was looking between the Lady and the King with a strange expression on his face. A hope so painful he dared not acknowledge it; a closed tension that was letting nothing escape.She could see his hands and they were trembling slightly. As she watched, he clenched them hard against his sides.

“Pilgrim?”

“Majesty?”

“What are your desires towards this hotblood woman? Are you prepared to propose marriage, according to our custom and usage?”

Jess gasped at the question and stared at the greyfolk king, who seemed to be smiling. The expression was unnerving.There was a twittering and rustling of excited comment from the assembled creatures and she dared not look at Palmer.

“Well, Pilgrim?”

“Yes, your majesty. Such is my desire.” He sounded so certain. She put one hand over her mouth to stop herself from making any further sound.

“And you, mistress,” the intense gaze was once more focussed on her. “Will you entertain this proposal?”

Now she was shaking as well. “I don’t think I know what it means.”

“That you are willing to contract a marriage with Pilgrim here, according to the rites of our kind, which bind him as our beloved subject.” She thought she heard a slight noise from Palmer, as if he wanted to dispute this, but as the king seemed not to have heard, she thought herself mistaken. “That he will cleave to you and you to him, and that none of our subjects might dispute or interfere with such a union, on pain of extinction.”

“Oh.”It seemed quite a penalty.

“Are you willing to hear this proposal?”

“Yes, then. Yes, I will.”

“Then with what name will you marry, Pilgrim?”

Palmer looked across at her, and his smile was brilliant. He looked as ragged and wild a man as she had ever seen - and his smile was like the sun to her.She smiled back as he spoke decisively: “My own. William Palmer, majesty.”

“And do you accept this marriage, Weaver of Frensham?”

She nodded, then found her voice. “I do accept it.”

“And in what name do you marry?”

“Jessica Demoins, majesty.”

“Take hands.”

Palmer came forward and held out both hands, and she placed her palms down on his. His fingers were warm and firm, and even her chilled hand could feel the vitality that flowed from him.

“Then,” the king’s voice was strong and she could hear the cries of ravens and rooks and crows in it, “I claim the rights and privileges of the matrimonial well and I proclaim that there is a marriage made between Pilgrim and the Weaver of Frensham.It is proclaimed, and it is made, and let none seek to break it.”

Then against the sound of cheering and birds cawing and somewhere, horns being blown, she was in Palmer’s arms and he was kissing her, kissing her as if he had never wanted anything so much and as if he would never stop.

The walk back to the farm was hampered by their exhaustion and by the giggling need to stop and kiss every few yards. When they finally got to the door, Jess handed him the key.

“Your job, carlman. Husbund. ” she said and he grinned and unlocked the farmhouse. He turned and lifted her off her feet and into his arms to take her over the threshold and she was only surprised that he didn’t drop her, his injured hand causing him to wince a little as he put her down to lock the door again.

“William,” she said, “I know it’s only ten o’clock in the morning, but I am too tired to do anything other than go to bed.”

“Of course.” He was instantly attentive. “You go and sleep. I’ll get a fire going - it’s cold in here.” As if reminded, he asked, “How’s your wrist?”

She smiled. “It’s fine. Wake me sometime?”

*

She was asleep almost as soon as she got into bed and slept the feeble daylight through, then on into the night.When she stirred, it was to see shimmering light from under the bedroom door.She blinked and then heard a faint music: obviously William was still downstairs even though the bedside clock was showing midnight.

The door at the bottom of the stairs showed a flickering light from the fire - and candles, probably. The music was soft and sweet and nothing that she recognised. There was an old radio in the kitchen that he had obviously decided to mend and this sounded like Radio Three as its most lyrical.

She pushed the door open.

The sitting room was transformed.Small lights like tiny candles adorned the mantel and the stepped bricks of the chimney breast, the window sills and the bookshelves.They danced, silver and gold and green by turns, lighting the room with a delicate sparkle. Underfoot, she could feel deep softness, like velvet under her slippers, and there was a scent of fresh flowers and something rich and intoxicating. The music was coming from nowhere.

“Ah… You’re awake at last,” said a deep warm voice and she turned to see William Palmer come into the room from the kitchen, two long crystal glasses in his hands. He was dressed in a long robe of shifting black and gold, a wreath of oak leaves on his dark hair and he looked like something out of a legend.She gaped and could say nothing.

He smiled and gave her one of the glasses. “Look,” he said and drew her over to the mirror over the fireplace. “See?”

And she saw a small woman, dressed in something long and flowing that shone green and gold and silver, great gems of green and amber at her wrists and a crown of yellow and white flowers in her bright hair. She could smell honeysuckle and she gazed at herself, then at him as he stood beside her. She could feel the shift of silk over her body and wondered at how well-matched they looked.

“The king’s gift, I think,” he said and touched her glass with his. “A wedding present. It’s an illusion, of course, but a rather fine one, all the same.I must say, it’s quite surprising.”

She nodded and tasted the wine which was nothing she had tried before, rich and full with a tingle of alcohol that lit gold down her throat. “His beloved subject?”

“Hmm… I am not his subject, however much he wants to call me one.”

“But you do work for him, don’t you?”

“And sometimes against him.” He smiled. “Don’t look so worried. I’m not at all clear quite how he thinks of me - and I suspect it changes.” He lifted his glass and tilted it against hers with a clear crystal ringing. “To our marriage,” he said. “To you, my love.”

“To our marriage,” she repeated. “And to you.”

They drank and were silent for a long while, in the enchantment of firelight and candlelight and quiet music.

The shabby old carpet had been replaced by a deep, dark green velvet; cushions and pillows, silken and brilliantly coloured, were piled up on it in place of her old wide sofa.Palmer took her hand and moved the glass to the mantel. He drew her down and settled her on the cushions, enthroning her like a queen. He traced her face with gentle fingers as he sat down by her side and turned her towards him.

“You do know that -”

“Yes. I know.You won’t grow old and I will. We’ll have to live with that.”

“It might not be easy.”

She smiled and reached out a hand to him, outlining the bruise on his cheekbone with as soft a touch as she could. “I know. When the time comes, William, we’ll worry about it.Let it go for now.”

“I… And the king? He hasn’t let me go.”

“And you’ll get called away on some terrible task and I won’t know where you are,” she said, watching his face. “You’ll reappear months or years later. I’ll hit you really, _really_ hard.”

“Oh.”

“And when you’re here, you’ll spend your time sorting out my finances and being bitten by horses… I’ve no idea why you did it. It’ll be awful.”

“That horse has got to go,” he growled as he bent to kiss her.

“Yes,” she said, when she could. “I’m the only one allowed to bite you.”

His grin was wicked and delighted. “Sweetheart, you may have full biting rights.” His bruised left hand was proving the power of arnica, finding clasps on her gown and undoing them.It seemed that the king had decided that underwear was unnecessary and she set about discovering whether the same was true for him.

“You like being bitten?” she enquired and got only a sound that might have been affirmation or something else. He put his fingers across her lips and they stopped talking for a very long time indeed.

***

Morning found them huddled naked in each others’ arms, wrapped in his greatcoat and her dressing gown, on the ragged rug before the sulking embers of a dying fire. Jess woke first and took a look around the room, restored to its shabby self, before burrowing deeper into his arms, into his warmth and strength.

“Told you it was illusion,” came the quiet rumbled comment in her ear.

“Not the important bit. Very nice while it lasted, though,” she said, yawning. She sat up and drew her dressing gown about her. “Come on. Time to get up.”

“Some honeymoon this is,” he grumbled and then grinned up at her. “You looked so good with flowers in your hair. Like a dryad,” he said and picked at something tangled in her fringe. A dying white blossom lay there in his palm. “You must do it more often.”

She countered it with a dried oak leaf picked from the folds of his coat. “Not quite all illusion, then?” She ran her fingers through his hair which was dishevelled after their wedding night. “You looked amazing… Wild. Dangerous. Very sexy.”

He blushed and she laughed aloud. “Now that I did not think to see, William Palmer.”

“So, wife,” he said, ignoring her giggles. “How’s the snow looking?”

Jess went to the window and looked out. The pristine whiteness was disintegrating, patches of green and brown and black showing through as it melted. “Thawing, I think, _husband_. We’ll be able to get out.”

“Good. You can post your weaving and I can buy some clothes,” he said, joining her. He slipped his arms around her, and rested his chin on the crown of her head. “I’m not wearing Luke’s stuff any longer. It wouldn’t be right.”

“No. Of course. Have you - I’ve got some money, if you need it.” She wondered where he had been thinking of going - Oxfam?She suddenly wanted to see him in something new and rich-coloured and which fitted him better than worn jeans and a ragged sweater. He would suit, she thought, dark reds as well as the more obvious greys and browns of his colouring.

“Yes, you have, but as it happens, so have I.” He was quietly amused. “Don’t worry. I’ll talk to a wall and then we’ll go into your bank and sort out your accounts.”

“And I’ll ring the Baxters about Prince before we go.”

“Very good, wife. That is a definite start.”

“It is, husband. It is.”

They kissed again and she thought she heard a faint, croaked voice calling his name. But he did not seem to hear it, so she ignored it.

**Author's Note:**

> Radio 3, for those who aren't sure, plays (mostly) classical music..
> 
> My apologies for not getting the Anglo-Saxon right (I'm fairly sure I haven't) - but I hope you get the idea.


End file.
